Thursday 7 May 2009

New cordial made

When out over the Bank holiday weekend, we picked hawthorn flowers to make a hawthorn flower cordial/syrup. This one was a slightly different process to the dandelion syrup. Firstly the flowers were cut away from the stems and layered into jars with a sprinkling of caster sugar over every inch or so of flowers.
Sugar syrup is made in the saucepan - water, granulated sugar and lemon juice. Heated until the sugar is dissolved and boiled for about 3 minutes, then set aside to cool, adding a few tablespoons of Rosewater.

The cooled syrup is then poured into the jar of hawthorn flowers. With the lids screwed down loosely, the jars were stood in a saucepan on some newspaper and with some newspaper in between them to avoid any banging of the jars. Water is added to the pan - as much as the pan can allow without it covering the jars and brought to the boil. Even with the newspaper in, this was very noisy. Once brought to the boil, the heat was turned down to barely simmering and left for 1 hour.
Allow to cool, lift the jars out and tighten the lids. When quite cold, strain and filter the flower syrup and bottle. Stored cool or in the fridge, it will keep for months.

Dilute with water, add a slice of lemon and sit back and enjoy.

Right now, what can I use next to make a cordial .... waiting for those lovely Elderflower to come out now. Want to try and make some Elderflower champagne too.

So what else ...

4 comments:

  1. what a lovely idea, have seen all the hawthorn about now i know what to do with it xx

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  2. Already inspired by 5 Orange Potatoes myriad of ideas for dandelions (past the usual leaves in salad), I now find a recipe to use hawthorn - *sigh* I'll HAVE to try this too now!

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  3. Sounds great - what about mint or the nettle?

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  4. Did the previous nettle on with blackcurrant leaves (forgot any pictures though).
    Was thinking mint, and other herbs.

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